AL PC: Jerbraxas

Jerbraxas Frostscale the dragonborn paladin

My favorite DM offered to run a game at a local game store and it was Lost Mine of Phandelver. I couldn’t resist. Unfortunately, only three players were there. And the DM wasn’t going to remove any enemies. After we survived the goblin ambush, the other players had no interest in resting. Luckily the rest of the party were halflings that were willing to stealth around in the darkness, while my dragonborn paladin tanked up front. I feared that we would all die, but we somehow cleared out most of the Cragmaw Cave and then convinced the last group of goblins to give use their hostage and let us go. The dice smiled upon us that night.

For the second session, we ended up with more players. We went to the town and dealt with the Red Brands in both the street and at their hideout. The nothic wrecked the party, killing the wizard and continuing to down the other characters. If not for healing potions, we would have had a TPK. In the end though, we were victorious and even took out Glassstaff.

We have had trouble scheduling more of these sessions, but I’m looking forward to (eventually) getting some more treasure points and getting a magic item.

AL PC: Jereed

Jereed the Tortle Monk

This will be a short entry because I never got to play this character. I saw an online posting from a DM looking for players to join an Out of the Abyss campaign. That sounded like fun to me so I responded. As one of the first people to reply, I got a spot in the game. I then imagined that it would be the perfect opportunity for me to finally play a tortle monk like I have been wanting to do.

Unfortunately, when the day game for the game, I messaged the DM and he said I “didn’t make the cut” for the game. That didn’t make any sense. That phrase implied that there was some sort of competition or something to get a spot in the campaign, but that never happened. He had never messaged me back about anything other than answering my questions about the lengths of the sessions and such.

I messaged the DM back to try to figure out what happened, but I just got no response. Oh well. Eventually, I will play this character. I just need to find the right time to introduce him.

AL PC: Jerboa

Jerboa Stoutfoot the halfling barbarian

If you look up “jerboa” you will see that it is basically a kangaroo rat. What a neat word. I decided it would be a great name for a halfling barbarian, especially if I eventually get him some boots of striding and springing. For his backstory, I decided he was from a noble halfling family connected to the Emerald Enclave. He went off as an ambassador to the barbarians of the North, only to end up loving the barbarian’s life and training with them.

Jerboa is my first real Season 8 character. It’s been frustrating not having treasure or magic items, but as a barbarian that hasn’t been a big deal.

DDAL05-1 Treasures of the Broken Hoard: I ended up playing this module two weeks in a row, continuing on. What’s funny is that it’s technically five one-hour quests. We spent four hours doing the first two quests and another four hours to finish it up. Despite it being eight hours of play, the rewards were limited by the hour-time limit of the quests.

DDAL05-2 The Black Road: I always enjoy this module. Our team pushed through without any serious issues.

DDEX1-3 - Shadows Over The Moonsea: This was the wrong adventure to bring a barbarian into; most of the module is investigating, finding clues, and talking to NPCs. I felt like Jerboa was a bit useless until the final battle. It was still fun, but I mostly let the other characters do things since Jerboa really is just setup to smash things.

Still Tier 1, still without any magic items, I am hoping to play this character again soon…

AL PC: Jermaine

Jermaine Nexus Nesmee the tiefling paladin

Technically, I made this character in Season 7 but I only played one adventure with him because of a very serious rule in Adventurers League: you are not allowed to change a character’s name. Other than Ro and my legacy characters (Thokson and Thoxina), I had decided to go with a “Jer” theme for my character names. Jarenian is technically spelled a little differently, but still sounds like “Jer” when you say it. Thus, having only played one session as Nexus Nesmee, I decided to shelf the character.

One day I was looking at a list of words that started with “Jer” and realized that Jermaine means brother and thus could be a title for a monk or a paladin. For Season 8, I brought Nexus back as “Brother” Nexus Nesmee, aka Jermaine Nexus Nesmee the tiefling paladin. Unfortunately, since he had played an adventure in Season 7, but had not received any magic items, I have put him at a disadvantage in Season 8. He won’t have enough treasure points to purchase a Table F item at the end of Tier 1 unless I DM some more and apply some DM rewards to him. So I guess I need to DM more…

Adventures
DDEX1-4: Dues for the Dead: I played this adventure during Season 7, several times with different characters. It’s always fun.

CCC-PP-TDD01-01 Trouble Under Winton: This session was insane. The DM had warned us ahead of time that it could be lethal, but I had no idea. This kobold lair was full of enemies. We almost had a TPK, with some of the party members telling us to run, save ourselves, and leave them behind. My character complied. It was so sad. Meanwhile, some of the other characters were starting a communist revolution within the kobolds. There were definite times when I thought to myself “I’d rather be a low-level fighter or cleric than paladin” but I kept playing my character; he’s going to be amazing at level 6…

CCC-TAROT01-03 A Martyred Heart: This was a fun adventure that, luckily, was done for charity and we had re-rolls as options with the money donated. The re-rolls saved us, but it’s all together possible the DM calculated that when he was putting together the threats.

CCC-AETHER-02 The Heir to Orcus Verse 2: This adventure featured some interesting items that were a tribute to the video game DOOM. I liked the idea of fighting lots of minions, but the “big bad” final fight was disappointing because the bad guy teleported away. I think it’s because the adventure is part of a series (which I will likely never get to play out, but oh well).

He’s almost to Tier 2…

AL Season 8

The changes in the rules from AL Season 7 to Season 8, and events surrounding them, caused me to take five months off from playing in Adventurers League. By coincidence, that was also the beginning of the school year and thus I got busy again. But wow – I remember being angry and confused. At first, I was also in denial that the rules would stay the way they were; I, like many other people, believed the AL Admin Team would listen to the community feedback and make the changes less extreme. Thus, part of my wait was originally hoping that they would still change back at least some of the rules.

The funny thing was that I had already paid to go to a couple of conventions and play some D&D in person, but I ended up not playing in the sessions because I was afraid the rules were “in flux” and about to be amended. They weren’t. The AL Admin Team stuck to their guns and kept all of the changes, despite so many of us thinking them too extreme. Bottom line, I didn’t think it would feel like D&D without any treasure or loot from the adventures. But, looking back, I also hadn’t given it a chance yet. I didn’t fully understand the ACP/TCP system and the content catalog was full of strange-speak. I wish I would have just kept playing though. For my pre-season 8 characters the TCP system is working out fine (because they already have some magic items). It’s just my new characters that don’t have anything of value. The levels at Tier 1 are hard to get through, waiting to have enough treasure points to buy a magic item.

In the end, I missed the community and decided to go back to playing AL in February. Now that it’s been over a month back, I realized that even though it’s different – it’s still fun to play AL D&D. What does bother me are the players and DMs who call the treasure in the adventures “chocolate coins” and ruin my immersion (even more than it already has been). Technically the DMs are just supposed to not mention the treasure or explain away why we adventurers can’t keep it (such as it going back to our guilds or being donated or returned to whomever it was originally stolen from).

The main sadness for Season 8 is the less-incentivizing DM Rewards system. With DMs seeing less rewards for their time, less people are DMing. That means less sessions are available. To compensate for that, I have joined more online Discord communities to find more games. Unfortunately, most game postings fill up within ten minutes of the posting. That means, if I really want to play a lot of D&D, I have to watch all of the Discord groups like a shark. With a job during the day, that’s just not possible.

For now I am going to just remember the old saying “the more things change, the more they stay the same” and keep on rolling my dice. I also keep checking the official AL Facebook group, which was not something I really worried about in Season 7. But the Admins post official rulings there without updating the actual rules documents. In an age with such great technology, I don't understand that. A simple Google Drive shared file or something similar could have constantly updated documentation. But whatever. I'll do what I have to, to try to be in compliance with the needlessly complicated Season 8 rules system.